Don’t mess with Tex-tbooks: How Texas’ vote made California mad

Ok, so the Texas State Board of Education did end up adding religious freedom and Thomas Jefferson the Enlightenment thinker to its social studies curriculum (thank God!); however, the new guidelines are much more conservative than the previous ones and more conservative than many parents are comfortable with.

Some of the loudest opponents to the changes are over on the left coast, in California, where they’re afraid Texas’ curriculum will mean “extreme right-wing” teachings in their textbooks (since most publishers cater to Lone Star standards).

Among the changes, “Texas schoolchildren will be required to learn that the words ‘separation of church and state’ aren’t in the Constitution and evaluate whether the United Nations undermines U.S. sovereignty,” the AP reported. Critics say the curriculum heavily favors patriotism, tradition, free enterprise and Founding Fathers’ Christianity.

California has proposed a bill that would require their school board to acknowledge and disclose any textbooks with content resulting from Texas standards before adopting them in schools.

The bill says “As proposed, the revisions are a sharp departure from widely accepted historical teachings that are driven by an inappropriate ideological desire to influence academic content standards for children in public schools,” according to a post in the blog Religion Clause.

The new teachings on religious freedom separate the notion of church-state separation (which many of the Christian SBOE members oppose) with the First Amendment. HoustonBelief blogger Hux offers a historical rundown of America’s freedom of religion here.